The present invention relates to information-processing equipment and an information-processing system, especially to the information-processing equipment and the information-processing system which can be switched over redundantly.
A general-purpose server is widely used for the service provision in an IP network. Especially in the service which is not allowed to halt, a service provision server is operated with redundancy in order to secure reliability. In a redundant operation, when the service provision server has a breakdown and falls in the state in which a further service provision is difficult to continue, the service provision is continued by switching over to a standby server which is prepared separately.
There is a virtualization technology as technology of operating plural operating systems (OSs) on one general-purpose server. Although there are various realization methods in virtualization of hardware, the invention described by Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication NO. H11-149385 discloses a multi-OS configuration method in which plural OSs are executed simultaneously on one computer, by realization of the divided management of hardware resources and suitable interruption processing.
The invention described by Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication NO. 2005-173751 discloses how to realize stable system operating management by performing a periodical switching processing between a master system and a standby system, with application of virtual machine system technology of a computer system installed in plural bases coupled via a network.
Conventionally, the service provision in an IP network is performed by the plural-OS-coexisting system from various reasons such as the versatility of a service content, maintenance and operation, etc., and the redundant configuration in such a system needed to be constructed for every OS. That is, when a general-purpose server using a certain OS (A) and another general-purpose server using a certain OS (B) provide respectively different services, a spare server (hereinafter called a standby server) to each of the general-purpose servers for OS (A) and OS (B) is needed. In this case, although not providing service, the standby server must be always operative in order to accept system switchover from the operation system server in shortest possible time when a failure occurs in the operation system server which is providing the service. It is indispensable to shorten the system switchover time as much as possible in recent days when voice communication has been performed in a network.
However, when service provision is carried out using the system in which plural kinds of OS are coexisting as mentioned above, many standby servers must coexist, leading to the waste of resources. Such as standby power expenses and personnel expenses for operating the standby servers will also push up extra costs.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication NO. H11-149385 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication NO. 2005-173751 have failed in describing about these problems.